Albatross

by Terry Fallis

“Do you think Adam could become a professional golfer? Does he have a future on the PGA Tour? Is he the next Tiger Woods?”

  “You just posed three queries. Do you have difficulty choosing which question to ask?”

  “Let me simplify it,” the host said. “Is Adam Coryell the next Tiger Woods?”

  I was startled. I hadn’t been expecting that question. Me, the next Tiger Woods? No, I didn’t think so. It made no sense. This wasn’t a movie.

  “I cannot say at this time. But if he keeps playing golf naturally, improves his putting, and is not unduly distracted by temptations like drugs, alcohol, sex, cars, music, food, films, and other sports, he could do well. He could do very well,” Professor Gunnarsson said. “I do not know if he will be as good as Tiger Woods, but it is within reason to contemplate the possibility. It may well be within reach. But it is entirely in Adam’s hands, and in the rest of his special physical being.” He paused and squirmed in his seat. “Now, are we almost done? I am wilting here in this heat, and my eyes are starting to hurt from all the lumens your lights are firing at me.”

  “I see. Yes, we’re close to wrapping up,” the host said. “Um, changing gears a bit, I understand there are a few players on the Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Maple Leafs who, having heard about your Predictive Innate Pinnacle Proficiency in Major Sports theory, actually took their own measurements and sent them to you.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I ran their measurements through the algorithm as they requested, and sent them back the results.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Well, what were the results?” the host said, doing little to hide his exasperation.

  “Oh, I see. All five of the players are reasonable athletes, but each has pursued a sport for which he is not ideally suited.”

  “Wait, what? What do you mean?”

  “I thought I was being clear. Let me try again. I mean that one of the basketball players had quite an impressive Gunnarsson score for volleyball, much higher than he rated in basketball. And another would likely be a better football player. And I must say, one of the Maple Leaves was interesting.”

  “Actually, we say Maple Leafs,” the host corrected.

  “Why would you say that?” Professor Gunnarsson asked. “English is not my first language, but I am quite certain leafs is not a legitimate word.”

  “Yes, well, be that as it may, it’s a long tradition,” the host said. “Anyway, what was interesting about the Leafs player?”

  “Well, his score is so low, it is a miracle he can compete in hockey at this level at all,” the professor explained. “It is almost certain that he cannot get any better than he is right now.”

  “Can you share the names of these players?”

  “I don’t recall the names. But in view of their Gunnarsson scores, I don’t think I’ll be the only person to forget their names.”

  “Ouch! Now, that was a burn,” the host chuckled, shaking his head.

  “Burn? I do not know what that means,” the professor said. “I’m not aware of any burning, except the skin on my face from your infernal lights.”

  The interview ended shortly thereafter. Probably a good thing.

  “Well, that ought to send the Toronto sports media into a tizzy,” Ms. Davenport said to me. “I told him not to mention the Raptor and Leaf players. It was a no-win situation.”

  “It was a bit awkward,” I replied. “If there were a Gunnarsson score to predict proficiency in television interviews, I think the professor’s number would be quite low.”

  “Agreed. Another consequence of his missing filter.”

  Ms. Davenport was right. The sports media went crazy the next day. The professor had to change hotels to escape the reporters trying to track him down to reveal the identities of the Raptors and Leafs who submitted their measurements. If he’d remembered their names during the TSN interview, I think he would have gladly provided them.

  The following week, after the professor had returned to Adelaide, I won the Toronto District School Board City Championships at St. Andrew’s Golf Club in Toronto’s west end. My nearest rival was four strokes behind.

  It had been just about a month since Ms. Davenport had measured my extremities and lent legitimacy to Professor Ingemar Gunnarsson’s wild theory—and turned my life upside down. Going to school felt almost normal, except for my automatic ascension to the cool kids’ clique. I didn’t ask for it, or even want it. It just happened. If I’m being completely truthful, I liked all the attention, though I tried very hard not to show it. I promised myself I would stay grounded in who and what I was, regardless of all the publicity swirling around me. Alli, on the other hand, found all the hoopla amusing, for which I was grateful. I was worried things might change with her if the spotlight on my golf burned too bright. So I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening and just focused on being myself. I never missed a class (except for when I had tournaments). I always did my homework. I still read my favourite writers, and tried to keep writing. I still dreamed about my grail pens. And Alli and I were still together and still committed to writing our antiphonal novel, though I was having trouble getting to it.

  Beyond quietly enjoying the attention, I also liked winning. It felt good to win the city championships, even if I was somewhat disconnected from the feat. After all, my body won the tournament, but I guess I was there, too, along for the ride. My victory was written up in all the local papers, and I’d done several television interviews. By this stage, my parents had bought me the rental set of Callaway Diablos from the Ladies’ Golf Club of Toronto.

  A week after the city championships, I won the provincials by six strokes and set a new Ontario scoring record. It was much bigger news than my city championship victory. There were long reports on the nightly sportscasts, a hastily produced video profile ran on TSN, and they had a special assembly in the school auditorium to celebrate my unexpected achievement. The general view of the media, the local golf world, my fellow players, and my classmates was that I was truly a special, amazing, perhaps even generational golfer. I was more interested in becoming a special, amazing, perhaps even generational writer, like Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, or John Irving. But in the last four weeks, it felt like I’d moved a long way from that world, drifting even further away with each tournament victory.

  My problem was, I just didn’t like golf that much, and it didn’t feel like I was suddenly going to fall in love with it anytime soon. It took a very long time to play and didn’t seem to accomplish anything particularly redeeming or constructive. When you stripped everything away, I didn’t really care that I was a high school prodigy at shooting that stupid little white ball into that stupid little hole. The world wouldn’t be a better place if I could shoot lower scores than other golfers. But I believed the world just might be better if I could write a story or a novel that moved people, that made them think, that made them laugh, that empowered them. And my writing had certainly suffered since I had picked up the game of golf. I had less time to think and less time to write. Our antiphonal novel wasn’t going to write itself. I had to find the bandwidth to get back to it. But it seemed my ability to hit a golf ball interfered with my ability to write, or at least my opportunity to write. I simply had less room in my life for writing. That didn’t feel good, and it didn’t feel right.

  But was I truly unhappy? No, not yet. Annoyed? Occasionally. Fulfilled? Not really. Bored? Often. Chuffed with my modest level of fame? Sometimes, but I just wished I’d earned the enhanced public profile as a writer, and not as a golf savant. Eventually, these private thoughts busted out of my head and into the open.

  “I don’t deserve any of this!” I complained to Ms. Davenport one day. “I’m not responsible. I’m not doing anything. My arms and legs are to be congratulated. But I’m just the sentient being attached, with no influence, no agency over my golf success. I’m not even trying.”

  “That’s the paradox, Mr. Coryell,” she replied with a look of concern.
“If you were trying, you’d never win. You have a gift, a natural gift. It’s like Darwin decided to evolve only your body because your survival as a human being depended on golf.”

  “I don’t want my whole world to be defined by golf. I have other plans that don’t involve hitting a ball into a hole.”

  “There’s room and time for both,” she replied patiently. “The reality is, you are one in a billion, Mr. Coryell. You are three royal flushes in three consecutive hands. I believe there is no limit to what you can achieve in the golf world if you decide to stick with it. It can give you, in a relatively short time, the kind of personal and financial freedom that the rest of us mere mortals work our entire lives to secure. And you can use that freedom to pursue your dreams—like being a writer.”

  I sighed. Silence hung between us for a few moments. “Did you read my short story yet?” I finally asked.

  “I did, and I think it’s quite good. I’m handing them back in class tomorrow. I think you can make it better. It needs a bit more tension. The stakes aren’t quite high enough. And I’m wondering if it might have more urgency and immediacy if you tried the present tense.”

  “Hmmm. The present tense. Never thought of that,” I said, playing with the idea in my mind. “I think I see what you mean. I’ll give it a shot and see how it reads.”

  “One more thing for you to consider. It’s just a matter of time before U.S. colleges catch wind of your unusual talent. I have no doubt you’ll be offered full-ride scholarships to the best schools. So be ready for that.”

  “Well, I think my short story is good and all that, but I’m not sure U.S. schools will have seen it yet.”

  Ms. Davenport laughed. “Nice one. But they will call.”

  That night I finally wrote, in one long stint, the next chapter in our antiphonal novel. In the story, the young hockey player from the northern town down on its luck is suddenly drafted by the Boston Bruins. He can’t pass up the opportunity a shot at the NHL represents, so he tells his girlfriend he won’t be going to Toronto for university. He hopes she can understand. He wants to try the long-distance relationship thing, but all she can say is that it’s a very long way from Toronto to Boston.

  A couple of nights later, the phone rang just after dinner. I picked it up.

  “Hello, could I speak with Adam Coryell, please,” drawled a man’s voice.

  “This is he,” I replied.

  “Hello, Adam. I’m Scott Fitzgerald, and I run the golf program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.”

  “You have a very literary name, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  “Oh, really, you think so?” he replied, sounding perplexed. “Now, why do you say that?”

  MAY 2014

  It was a very long drive from Toronto to Lake Temagami on the Friday night. Alli and I held hands in the back seat for most of the way. I was ready for a break from all the attention on my golf exploits. You see, by this stage, there’d been a ton of media coverage, and I’d become quite well known locally as “that young golf star” (or “freak,” as some put it). Professor Gunnarsson’s theory had become much more than informed academic speculation. I added real, evidence-based experience to the mix. To me and a growing number of others, Predictive Innate Pinnacle Proficiency in Major Sports was by then a rock-solid fact. Around the world, amateur athletes and couch potatoes alike were breaking out measuring tapes and calculators, hoping for a ninety-plus Gunnarsson score in a sport that paid well. But so far, I was still the only one.

  Of course, there was a price to be paid for all the accolades, attention, and opportunities. And the price was that I had to play golf—a lot of golf. And on my personal list of things I enjoyed, golf ranked about even with snow shovelling and only slightly higher than the flu.

  So, by the time the Victoria Day long weekend rolled around, I was really looking forward to spending it with Alli and her family at their cottage on Lake Temagami, far away from golf. When we had started seeing each other, I’d been bowled over to learn that her family had a cabin on an island about half a day’s paddle from the camp I’d attended eight summers in a row. I’d loved it there.

  But there was a problem. There was something I hadn’t yet told Allison, and I knew I’d have to while we were away. Ms. Davenport knew. My parents knew. Hell, there were several people in the United States who knew. I couldn’t wait any longer to tell Alli. I figured the pristine wilderness setting might make it easier. Yeah right, that’s it. Good thinking.

  During the long drive, our antiphonal novel sat next to her. It had been eight months since I’d written the chapter where the young man is drafted by the Boston Bruins. Alli apologized every week or so for not writing her chapter, but promised she would soon. I told myself she was busy with school.

  It was nearly ten-thirty when we finally arrived at the small marina on the shores of Lake Temagami. We unloaded the car and loaded the boat. It was dark, but the running lights on the boat and Alli’s mother’s back-of-her-hand knowledge of the lake delivered us safely to their dock in about twenty-five minutes.

  Later that night, after her parents had gone to bed, Alli and I sat on the dock, looked at the ceiling of stars, and listened for the periodic splash of a fish jumping. A cool breeze washed over us and we could hear small waves colliding with the boat moored beside us. It was idyllic. I almost didn’t tell her. It took every ounce of resolve I had.

  “Um, Alli, I have to tell you something,” I opened with breathtaking originality.

  “You’re sleeping with four other women?”

  “What? No!”

  “Guys?”

  “No.”

  “You won the lottery?”

  “Well, you could say that, but not really.”

  “I have spinach in my teeth?”

  “No. Alli, please. I’m serious.”

  “Sorry. You’re hardly ever serious. That’s part of your charm.” She sighed. “I haven’t eaten spinach for weeks, anyway.”

  “Okay. I have good news and bad news. What do you want first?” I asked.

  “Let’s get the bad news out of the way.”

  “Right. Okay, here goes. This has been a really hard decision, even though it kind of feels like I have no choice. That it would be foolish not to do this. It could change my life.”

  “Adam, don’t you think you should actually tell me what this mystery decision is before you give me all the reasons you’ve made it?” She was smiling when she said it, but there was some tension in her voice.

  “Sorry. Yes, of course,” I said. “I’m an idiot.”

  Suddenly, she swung around to face me with a serious look. Her eyebrows were all scrunched.

  “You’re not going to U of T with me next year, are you?” she asked, making it sound more like a statement than a question.

  That hit me hard and spilled what little wind was in my sails. I just looked up at the stars for a while. Then I drew and released what seemed like the deepest breath of my life.

  “I’ve accepted a full-ride athletic scholarship to play golf and study creative writing at Stanford. It’s near San Francisco.” I looked at her sadly. “I’m sorry, Alli.”

  Even in the dim light offered by the stars, I could see her just staring at me, nodding her head almost imperceptibly. I let it sink in a bit. Then she lowered her head and seemed to be staring straight through the dock to the water hidden beneath.

  “But you don’t even like golf,” she almost whispered.

  “Alli, I have this bizarre gift—a lightning strike—that could set me up for life. I’m too good at this game not to pursue it. And Stanford is a great school where the academics come first, even for scholarship athletes. Their creative writing program is well known and respected.”

  “But California. There was nothing closer, like maybe Boston?” she asked.

  “The golf program at Stanford is always strong in the NCAA, and if I can stay on track it will give me a shot at playing professionally, on the PGA Tour. But I think we can make it wo
rk. We’re not the first couple to deal with a long-distance relationship.”

  She was quiet for a few moments. Finally, she spoke. “So what’s the good news—I mean, besides that you’re not sleeping with four other women or guys and there’s nothing caught in my teeth?”

  “The good news is of a slightly different magnitude, but it is good news,” I started. “I have to play a tournament in upstate New York next weekend, so I wanted to give you your birthday present here and now.”

  I pulled out a gift-wrapped package from my backpack. She didn’t look like she was in the mood for a gift, but she took the box when I handed it to her. It was kind of dark to be opening a present under the stars, so I opened the flashlight app on my phone.

  She ripped the paper away, and then looked at me with wide eyes when she saw the Parker name on the box. She lifted the lid and gasped. “You did not just do this,” she said, holding it in her hands, stunned. “You didn’t.”

  “I’ve been saving for a while.”

  Then she began crying. I didn’t know what to do, so I let her cry for a moment or two. Finally, she gathered herself.

  “A Parker Duofold,” she said, shaking her head and staring at it. “Given the orangey-red colour, I bet it’s an early one.”

  “The first year they were made—1921,” I replied.

  “And a bottle of Parker Quink Blue. Perfect,” she said, sniffling and holding it up in the small pool of light. “The pen is in pristine condition. And look at this beautiful gold nib. It’s just gorgeous.”

  “And you do know why I chose this particular pen and model, right?” I asked.

  She looked at me, smiled, and nodded her head. “Conan Doyle wrote some of the Sherlock Holmes stories with a pen of this very make, model, and vintage. It’s perfect.” Then she began crying again. I thought it was because she was so happy.

  Early Monday morning, Alli stole into the bedroom I was staying in and slipped her hand in mine, gently easing me out of the bed. We tiptoed through the cottage, put our jackets on over our pajamas, and walked down onto the dock. The sun was just starting to rise and there was a mist clinging to the glassy surface of the lake. A few of the brighter stars were still visible in the darker western sky. We sat cross-legged, facing one another. Finally, she handed me the notebook we were writing our novel in. There was an expression on her face I’d never seen before. The closest adjective I can come up with, and it’s still not quite right, is melancholy—a word that sounds kind of like what it means.